Utterly false in every respect. Confederate progpaganda, pure and simple. I'll respond in detail later today. Wait for it...
Jordan
That'll just get added to the long list of "I'll respond later today" posts you've made and then never followed up on because you can't change fact, history, or (especially) law to suit your fantasies now matter how hard you try.
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
I want no part of your Marxist atheistic tyranny...
I want EXACTLY what Virginia fought for in the first and second revolutions...
What you guys are doing is called reverse-engineered-anachronistic-hermenuetics.
You are superimposing your modern-education-coolaid onto the founders. You are not being honest with the founders, not at all.
You both belong in France fighing the French Revolution.
You truly are a myopic individual.
At no time have I ever supported any version of Marxism, nor tyranny. I have stated, time and again, and been supported by your own posts, that you want a hardline Baptist theocracy and that such a thing is an anathema to freedom. I stand by that, as it is fact.
Take, for example, Jefferson's "Virginia Statute on Religious Freedoms". In his preamble paragraphs, the part that are not active and do nothing but set the stage, Jefferson references "Almighty God" and "Nature's God", a foundational deist principle that supports the latter part; the operative paragraphs.
Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson
An Act for establishing religious Freedom.
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;
That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,
That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;
That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,
That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,
That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;
That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
You and those like you impiously presume that you, as ecclesiastical and civic leaders can assume dominion over the faiths of others, setting up your own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible and endeavor to impose them upon others.
I reject that, as did Jefferson, as a form of religious tyranny that is wholly unsuited to the concepts of freedom and liberty. To quote Jefferson again, "[O]ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.
Originally Posted by Jefferson
Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Therefore, I stand as did our Founders and certainly Jefferson,
Originally Posted by Jefferson
"that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion."
Thus, you are left to practice and and follow your faith, me to mine, and others to their own, with NONE having the right to force their beliefs on any other and especially not on society as a whole through influence of religion on civic government. Marxism replaces all religion with the "church of the state", and that fails under Jefferson's ideals of freedom and liberty just so much as as did the Church of England, Islamofascism, or the concept of a hardlined Baptist theocracy. Those are not the existence of freedom and liberty as understood by the Founders, fought for by millions of Americans for over two centuries, and not what Truths we hold self-evident.
You, nor I, nor any other, can be compelled to support, follow, practice, or believe in any faith not of our choosing, nor can we be forced to live under the yoke of a religious doctrine enforced through civic government at any level. We are free to follow any faith or belief of our choosing, or none at all. Any deviance from this is an infringement upon a natural right.
Last edited by 4ager; 12/22/14.
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
Leave the Baptists out of this. It was because of their treatment in his native Virginia that Jefferson came to have his beliefs on religious freedom and it was in a letter to the Danbury Baptists that he first wrote the famous phrase.
Oh, and Jefferson did not consider himself a deist as that he believed that God took an active part in the affairs of men, intervening and guiding where He will. Jefferson just didn't necessarily believe in any doctrine followed by conventional Christians of the time although he referred to himself as a true Christian.
The Baptists then are not the Baptists of today. The hardline Baptists of today make Puritans look soft and given the opportunity, they'd be a kissing cousin to Iranian mullahs and the Taliban (Westboro Baptist, anyone?).
What Jefferson believed he believed was his right and his freedom. He also believed that none had the right to force any other to believe as they did, or at all, and that religious beliefs had no place in civic governance (see the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedoms above; it was put there for a reason).
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
There's no such thing as a "Baptist Taliban". Give it a rest. It wasn't a Baptist that shot those cops in NYC.
Did I say they were shooting cops? No. Was the jackleg in NYC a "taliban"? No, he was a Nation of Islam African-American.
It seems I've hit a nerve, and instead of taking a consideration of Jefferson's words and how they relate to actual freedom, you'd rather get all sore about my maligning hardline Baptists.
That, is telling.
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
Just admit that you are assuming too much as concerns my position; and that you are using hyperbole, straw man exagerations and ad hominem concerning me.... as Baptist Taliban...
And I will withdraw my assertion that you are a God-hating marxist.
Seriously; I do not know where you get such extreme opinions of me. I assert "the laws of nature and nature's God" as the foundation stone of all of our laws leaning upon Blackstone, (as did Jefferson) In that context I see no God-given inalienable constitional right to public deviancy or child-murder in the womb. I do not and never have asserted coercion with regards to religion.
I have never attended Westoboro Baptist and never would; I am a veteran and find his actions (former, he is dead) at veterans funerals reprehensible, unthinkable, worse than abominable.
If the Declaration of Independence puts our nation on the footing of a theocracy then so be it; but that is your extreme position and description. I am for the Declaration you seem to be against it; that sure seems marxist to me. Even John F Kennedy in his day invoked God-given inalienable rights as our foundation stone of freedom. That is our fall back postion when everything else fails.
At the heart of it all our American heritage is rooted in this Lockean tradtion and articulated precisely in the Declaration. It is the antithesis of the atheist Marxist ideology that makes man the sum of all things and the arbiter of all things.
The Boston rebels had a flag; it said, "An Appeal to Heaven" That comes right straight out of John Locke; word for word. He asserted that when all appeals to earthly authority have been exhausted, in the face of tyranny, then the only last recourse was, "An appeal to heaven and the contest of arms" since God's justice was the last court of appeal. This is still true today. It is foundational to the better aspects of American political science. One of the Confederate flags had an emblem of Washington on a horse and in latin the motto, "God Vindicates" So it is that both the north and the South leaned upon the Declaration.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.
"The bottom margin contains the national motto, Deo Vindice (variously translated as "Under God, [Our] Vindicator", "With God as [Our] Champion", "With God as [Our] Judge", and "Under the Guidance and Protection of God"). The Confederate Senator Thomas Semmes, in proposing this motto, took pains to stress that the CSA had "deviated in the most emphatic manner from the spirit that presided over the construction of the Constitution of the United States, which is silent on the subject of the Deity"
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.
Long ago, Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, a Presbyterian divine and Confederate officer on Stonewall Jackson�s staff, wrote this of American (i.e. yankee) Conservatism:
�[American Conservativism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism � American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition � Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom � The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it �in wind,� and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip.�
The upshot of all this is simple, really. Place no trust in Washington for your temporal salvation. It is broken and beyond reform. Neither place trust in the GOP or Democrat establishments. Both are corrupt and self serving. __________________________________________
Mike Hill in his insistence that DC is corrupt beyond reform and hopeless is near about the only sensible thing I have heard espoused politically in the last seven years when I first stumbled upon the LOS
Just admit that you are assuming too much as concerns my position; and that you are using hyperbole, straw man exagerations and ad hominem concerning me.... as Baptist Taliban...
And I will withdraw my assertion that you are a God-hating marxist.
Seriously; I do not know where you get such extreme opinions of me. I assert "the laws of nature and nature's God" as the foundation stone of all of our laws leaning upon Blackstone, (as did Jefferson) In that context I see no God-given inalienable constitional right to public deviancy or child-murder in the womb. I do not and never have asserted coercion with regards to religion.
I have never attended Westoboro Baptist and never would; I am a veteran and find his actions (former, he is dead) at veterans funerals reprehensible, unthinkable, worse than abominable.
If the Declaration of Independence puts our nation on the footing of a theocracy then so be it; but that is your extreme position and description. I am for the Declaration you seem to be against it; that sure seems marxist to me. Even John F Kennedy in his day invoked God-given inalienable rights as our foundation stone of freedom. That is our fall back postion when everything else fails.
At the heart of it all our American heritage is rooted in this Lockean tradtion and articulated precisely in the Declaration. It is the antithesis of the atheist Marxist ideology that makes man the sum of all things and the arbiter of all things.
The Boston rebels had a flag; it said, "An Appeal to Heaven" That comes right straight out of John Locke; word for word. He asserted that when all appeals to earthly authority have been exhausted, in the face of tyranny, then the only last recourse was, "An appeal to heaven and the contest of arms" since God's justice was the last court of appeal. This is still true today. It is foundational to the better aspects of American political science. One of the Confederate flags had an emblem of Washington on a horse and in latin the motto, "God Vindicates" So it is that both the north and the South leaned upon the Declaration.
I stated exactly my position on you and your beliefs, and on mine.
If Jefferson was a Marxist, then so am I. I stand on his premise that you are free to practice your religion as you see fit, and me mine, but that no one should ever be forced to live under the yoke of a dictated religion.
The Declaration of Independence (for the umpteenth time) is NOT BINDING LAW in the US. Never has been; never will be. Nor is Blackstone. Binding law is the U.S. Constitution, the various state constitutions, and case law under those and those alone. I realize you don't want this to be the case, but it is, has always been, and will always be. There is no theocracy there, and in fact, they stand in direct opposition to your fantasies of a theocracy. Such a theocracy would be an anathema to freedom and to liberty.
I see you, like EE and others, refuse to read Jefferson's words tending instead to find ways to justify a state religion in direct opposition to the ideals of freedom and liberty.
For that, I will never stand. I will fight to the death for you to practice your religion as you see fit, but I will fit to the death against you or any other that tries to force a religion on me or anyone else in this land of freedom.
I swore that oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic years ago, and I stand by it today.
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence". John Adams
"A dishonest man can always be trusted to be dishonest". Captain Jack Sparrow
Long ago, Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, a Presbyterian divine and Confederate officer on Stonewall Jackson�s staff, wrote this of American (i.e. yankee) Conservatism:
�[American Conservativism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism � American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition � Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom � The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it �in wind,� and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip.�
The upshot of all this is simple, really. Place no trust in Washington for your temporal salvation. It is broken and beyond reform. Neither place trust in the GOP or Democrat establishments. Both are corrupt and self serving. __________________________________________
Mike Hill in his insistence that DC is corrupt beyond reform and hopeless is near about the only sensible thing I have heard espoused politically in the last seven years when I first stumbled upon the LOS
The only thing worse than a liberal is a liberal that thinks they're a conservative.
Place no trust in Washington for your temporal salvation. It is broken and beyond reform. Neither place trust in the GOP or Democrat establishments. Both are corrupt and self-serving.
No truer words have been spoken on this board than those.
Place no trust in Washington for your temporal salvation. It is broken and beyond reform. Neither place trust in the GOP or Democrat establishments. Both are corrupt and self-serving.
No truer words have been spoken on this board than those.
On that there is no disagreement.
Originally Posted by Mannlicher
America needs to understand that our troops are not 'disposable'. Each represents a family; Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Cousins, Uncles, Aunts... Our Citizens are our most valuable treasure; we waste far too many.
There's no such thing as a "Baptist Taliban". Give it a rest. It wasn't a Baptist that shot those cops in NYC.
Did I say they were shooting cops? No. Was the jackleg in NYC a "taliban"? No, he was a Nation of Islam African-American.
It seems I've hit a nerve, and instead of taking a consideration of Jefferson's words and how they relate to actual freedom, you'd rather get all sore about my maligning hardline Baptists.
That, is telling.
One post of mine compared to multiple posts of yours across multiple threads? Yes, it's telling.
Long ago, Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, a Presbyterian divine and Confederate officer on Stonewall Jackson�s staff, wrote this of American (i.e. yankee) Conservatism:
�[American Conservativism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism � American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition � Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom � The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it �in wind,� and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip.�
The upshot of all this is simple, really. Place no trust in Washington for your temporal salvation. It is broken and beyond reform. Neither place trust in the GOP or Democrat establishments. Both are corrupt and self serving. __________________________________________
Mike Hill in his insistence that DC is corrupt beyond reform and hopeless is near about the only sensible thing I have heard espoused politically in the last seven years when I first stumbled upon the LOS
Preaching sedition?
The Yankees were/are the traitors...and those who side with them.
"....refuse to read Jefferson's words tending instead to find ways to justify a state religion in direct opposition to the ideals of freedom and liberty."
Graciously...
I have asserted no such thing. Neither has EE. If so; which denomination did I assert as the state religion of VA or the entire nation? When did I post this? What were my words?
Notwithstanding I would point out that you make a technical error; because the founders did in fact have state religion even after ratification of the federal compact in some states. And Jefferson himself considered it an exclusive State's Rights issue. That Jefferson argued for disestablishing state religion in Va and won the debate, in context, was only binding in Va. And... as Madison pointed out, it improved the purity of the Church which he considered a good thing; and I do too.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.
I would describe myself as preaching Jefferson or preaching a renaissance of our founding principles:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.
